Blu-ray Players

Toshiba’s BDX1250 is designed to appeal to those making their first timid steps from standard-def DVD to hi-def Blu-ray. No shame in that, except it has to compete with plenty of other decks (including Sony’s BDP-S185 and Panasonic’s DMP-BD75) that are all taking the same approach. And at this end of the market, price is everything – the launch ticket of £130 made it an immediate non-contender, but shop around and you’ll find it for £100 or less.

Picture quality from this slimline, compact player is good. Detail-packed scenes are delivered with startling clarity, while colours are kept natural and punchy.

Even the tricky trial on the Silicon Optix HQV disc don’t cause it many problems, with smooth pans and a pleasing lack of jaggies on the diagonal filter test. Meanwhile, those who want to fine-tune their pictures can. A sub-menu offers brightness, contrast, hue, saturation and sharpness tweaks.

A front-mounted USB port caters for media playback of a variety of file formats, including MP3, JPEG, MKV, AVCHD, AAC and WAV. DivX HD files won’t play, though.

Disc-loading times are nice and zippy, with the notoriously tardy Terminator Salvation getting to screen in 43 seconds.

The BDX1250 makes no provision for Wi-Fi – hardwired Ethernet is all you get. And this is only for BD-Live purposes. YouTube, BBC iPlayer, Picasa and DLNA media streaming may be present on Toshiba’s step-up BDX2250, but they’re absent here.

The supplied remote control is as basic as they come, and sports fiddly little buttons.

Other rival entry-level decks – particularly Sony’s BDP-S185 – offer more features and smarter designs.

Toshiba BDX1250
Price: £100 Approx

Overall: 3/5